A surreal gathering that brings the influence of Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (opens in new tab) together with 80s-inspired gloss is taking place on the cover of French producer Débruit’s new album, From The Horizon.
It’s the work of The Rainbowmonkey, aka Markus Hofko.
Design dream team
His long-term design work with Xavier Thomas – the producer behind Débruit – started after Hofko’s band, okyo, connected with Débruit on Myspace and the two subsequently gigged together in Austria and Germany.
"I’ve always felt connected with Xav’s odd style and we found strong similarities in my design," says Hofko, who now lives in New Zealand.
His initial idea was to connect the cover with three previous Débruit EPs, where the subjects’ eyes and mouths were substituted with stylised objects."I thought it would be nice to show the world where these particles come from, the secret treasure place in the ‘desert of funk’," he says.
Belgian inspiration
However, inspiration came in the shape of a famous Belgian: "Xavier had just moved to Belgium and pointed out that he really enjoyed René’s work. We looked at how we could imitate his style. I cut out the eye of [his 1928 piece] 'The False Mirror' and placed it on my current cover draft. Bang! The eye, a classic motif."
The image was primarily produced in Cinema 4D (opens in new tab), with the final artwork being a simple render of the scene. "The software offers an amazing playground to design," Hofko says. "Having full control of light and shadow in your scene opens up endless possibilities."
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